Spring 2020

Remember Watergate, the threat of impeachment and the fall of President Nixon? Of course you do. After the courts decided Nixon should receive compensation for his archive, John Payne of Austin, Texas, was appointed to put a value on it. It’s an extraordinary story that he tells. The Watergate tapes is in this issue. In Summer will come the text files about Vietnam, student protests, drugs and how the Department of Justice tried to get John to reduce his valuation.

We also have the birth of On the Origin of Species in the Linnean Society in London, a terrific tale in the hands of Mark James. We have ‘The Games of the Goose’, the earliest game board in existence, John Esslemont and the Bahai faith, and our deputy, Tony Edwards, on Collecting Manuscript Fragments. We then have articles on Everyman’s Library, Bibliophilia, John Wolfson’s Bequest to Shakespeare’s Globe and a follow-up to our review of The Book Thieves: the Nazi Looting of Europe’s Libraries. Plus reviews, auction sales and book chat. Wit, pleasure and knowledge, it’s all there, only in the pages of The Book Collector.